Bela Karolyi, the polarizing coach who helped launch gymnasts to Olympic stardom, dies at 82

(CNN) — Bela Karolyi, the legendary and controversial Romanian American gymnastics coach who helped lead Mary Lou Retton, Nadia Comaneci and Kerri Strug to Olympic gold, has died, USA Gymnastics announced. He was 82.

Karolyi, along with his wife and world-class coaching partner Marta Karolyi, is credited with catapulting US women’s gymnastics to unprecedented success – albeit in ways some described as abusive or “sadistic” and that drew legal scrutiny to their famed Texas training mecca.

Still, Bela Karolyi remained unapologetic to the end for the methods he used to blaze a path to sports glory. “My attitude … is never to be satisfied,” he once told Texas Monthly. “Never enough, never.”

Bela Karolyi didn’t start as a gymnast. A Romanian national junior boxing champion, he competed in the 1956 Olympics in the hammer throw. Then, while studying at the Romania College of Physical Education, he took a mandatory gymnastics course – and failed.

Fueled by anger, Karolyi became consumed by the sport. And by his senior year, he was coaching the school’s women’s gymnastics team, whose star Marta Enoss would become his wife and professional ally.

The couple spent the late 1960s to early 1970s in the socialist Eastern Bloc trying to bolster their coaching credentials, including starting a gymnastics class at an elementary school. They were later asked to create a national gymnastics school and scouted for young talent among kindergartners at recess.

That’s when Karolyi spotted a precocious 6-year-old turning cartwheels: Her name was Nadia Comaneci. Both the young girl and the developing coach would soon propel each other to international stardom.

“Bela’s wife, Marta, was involved in gymnastics … so Bela got involved, too,” Comaneci recalled to The Guardian. “I think he was learning gymnastics with us.”

At age 14, Comaneci famously scored the first “perfect 10” in Olympic gymnastics. She earned six more perfect 10s at the 1976 Games in Montreal and helped solidify Karolyi as a powerhouse coach.

But Karolyi’s global fame came at the cost of relentless surveillance and control by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime. The communist leader capitalized on Romania’s successful gymnastics program, using it as both propaganda for the impoverished country and a way to raise money for its government.

After Romanian gymnasts lost to the Soviets in the women’s team competition at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, funding for Karolyi’s school was slashed. Still, Karolyi and Comaneci were expected to take an exhibition tour in the US – and net hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Romanian regime.

It was during that 1981 tour that the Karolyis, fed up with the Romanian dictatorship’s control, managed to slip out of their New York hotel and disappear from the watchful eye of Romanian secret police. With scant command of English and no coaching opportunities lined up in America, Bela Karolyi went to work earning $15 a day at a dock and $10 a night cleaning up at a bar, the Rocky Mountain News reported.

The couple’s luck began to turn, though, when a friend from the University of Oklahoma hired Karolyi to work in summer gymnastics camps, Texas Monthly reported.

“Shortly thereafter, Bela was approached by a group of businessmen with an offer to coach at a private gym in Houston,” according to USA Gymnastics. “When the group faced financial difficulties in October of 1982, Karolyi convinced them to sell the gym to him. He then built the gym into a cornerstone of the American gymnastics movement.”

He called the gym Karolyi’s World Gymnastics – a bold name, to be sure, but not a bombastic one. Talented young gymnasts from across the country soon flocked to Texas to train with the Olympic coach, and success among Karolyi’s students came quickly.

In 1983, Dianne Durham became the first Black gymnast to win the US National Championship. The next year, Mary Lou Retton became the first American woman to win the Olympic all-around title and left the 1984 Los Angeles Games with five Olympic medals. In 1991, Kim Zmeskal became the first American woman to win the individual all-around title at the world championships.

Karolyi’s most iconic career moment may have come at the 1996 Olympics, when Kerri Strug fell and injured her ankle on her first vault in the team finals. As Strug hobbled off the mat limping and wincing, spectators wondered whether she would perform her second vault – and whether Team USA’s hopes for a gold medal were dashed.

Then from the sidelines, her coach Karolyi shouted: “Shake it off! You can do it!”

So Strug limped back to the start of the vault runway and tried again. This time, her vault was nearly flawless – but the teenager quickly collapsed in pain.

In the end, Team USA would have won gold even without Strug’s second vault. But images of Karolyi carrying Strug – her leg heavily bandaged and an Olympic gold medal around her neck – were soon plastered on the front pages of newspapers and websites.

At the time, Strug was heralded as the epitome of strength over adversity. A year later, Karolyi was inducted to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport in Romania and the United States, with officials citing Strug as among his protégés “recognizable throughout the world.”

But critics later decried the pressure Karolyi put on his injured athlete as symbolic of his win-at-all costs mentality.

Seven years later, the coach denounced an investigation by The Orange County Register that detailed the prevalence of injuries suffered by US elite gymnasts – including some of Karolyi’s athletes – and the pressure to keep training or competing.

“There are no problems with our sport,” Karolyi told the Register in 2004. “We have an action-packed sport, and from time to time people get injured.”

In the years leading up to his death, Karolyi’s triumphant career also was marred by allegations of abuse at his famed Karolyi Ranch, which also served as the US Women’s National Team Training Center between 2001 and 2018 and a US Olympic Training Site from 2011 to 2018.

A staggering tally of assaults came to light after former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was accused – then convicted – of sexually assaulting minors. One former gymnast claimed the Karolyis turned a blind eye to Nassar’s actions in return for him letting injured athletes compete, according to a lawsuit against the couple, Nassar and others.

The suit also claims the Karolyis themselves physically struck gymnasts, scratched them until they bled, deprived athletes of food and water, confiscated food hidden in gymnasts’ rooms, screamed obscenities, told some gymnasts they were fat and required some to strip to their underwear so their peers could judge how they looked.

Neither the Karolyis nor their attorneys responded to CNN’s requests for comment at the time.

The Karolyis claimed in depositions first obtained by CNN that they had very little to do with the day-to-day operation of the ranch when it served as a training site for the women’s national gymnastics team. The remote camp closed soon after Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

In 2018, the civil suit was consolidated with other lawsuits filed in California against Nassar. Three years later, Nassar’s victims reached a $380 million settlement with USA Gymnastics, the US Olympic Committee and their insurers. As part of that agreement, the Karolyis were released from further litigation related to the claims. Most of the settlement was paid by insurers.

Even before the court action, some gymnasts who had reached the pinnacle of their sport recalled Bela Karolyi pushing them to keep working out through injury. Retton said she had a broken finger during a workout when Karolyi ordered her to perform her uneven bar routine, she recalled to Texas Monthly.

But the pain was immense, and Retton fell and landed on her chin. “I started bleeding from the mouth … and as much as I tried not to, I started to cry,” Retton told the publication.

“And Bela just got really mad at me. He said, ‘Get back on the bar.’ I was just gushing blood. I tried to get back on the bar. I couldn’t do it. So he said, ‘OK, then get out of the gym! You’re through!’”

Retton went to an emergency room and returned to the gym the next day, Texas Monthly reported.

But other elite gymnasts, like 1992 Olympian Betty Okino, credited Karolyi’s coaching style for strengthening them physically and mentally. “Prior to entering the Bela Karolyi camp, I knew one thing; Bela was my bus pass to the Olympics,” Okino wrote in 2001.

She recalled joining Karolyi’s gym and trying to earn a coveted spot among his small group of top gymnasts – those who were personally trained by Karolyi and often went on to win world or Olympic medals.

“After several weeks it became obvious how Bela was going to narrow down the team. He would push, criticize, and work us to our breaking point, and whoever remained standing earned the right to train with him,” Okino wrote.

“Karolyi structured his training in a way that built your physical and mental strength to such a remarkable level, that even he couldn’t tear you down. Bela wanted to know that when push came to shove, his athletes could handle any situation thrown at them.”

For years, Karolyi defended his coaching methods as effective – and dismissed some critics as jealous. “These critics of mine, who do you think they are? They are jealous coaches, nonproducers,” he told Texas Monthly in 1991.

“When they say, ‘Oh, that goddam Bela,’ it is because I have made their lives miserable. They now have to work as hard as me, all day long,” Karolyi said.

“The girls, they must be little tigers, clawing, kicking, biting, roaring to the top. They stop for one minute – poof! – they are finished.”

‘He was a complex individual’

Former gymnasts said they had a complicated relationship with Karolyi as their trainer.

Retired gymnast and member of the 1996 Olympic gold medal team Dominique Moceanu, who was coached by Karolyi in the 90s, said his influence on her life and the sport was “undeniably significant,” but noted he was “a complex individual, embodying a mix of strengths and flaws that left a lasting impact on those around him.”

Being under Karolyi’s guidance “came with immense challenges,” Moceanu said in a post on X following news of his death.

“His harsh words and critical demeanor often weighed heavily on me,” she said. “While our relationship was fraught with difficulty, some of these moments of hardship helped me forge and define my own path.”

In the wake of his death, Moceanu said “I choose to send loving thoughts to his family and loved ones, and honor our relationship by embracing lessons learned and striving to help create a world where compassion and encouragement guide our actions.”

Retired Romanian gymnast and gold medalist Nadia Comăneci also paid tribute to Karolyi by sharing photos of them together on Instagram, saying he had “a big impact and influence in my life.”

CNN’s Lindsey Knight contributed to this report.

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